Conventional dental care implements, such as toothbrushes, are usually provided with a relatively hard, usually plastic or wood, handle. In the case of a toothbrush, the handle is flattened at one end where the brush bristles are inserted. The handle may be straight or slightly curved.
Ideally, a toothbrush should clean the tooth surfaces, thus preventing the formation of bacterial plaque thereon, and to massage the gingivae, thus increasing the blood circulation therein and preventing gingivitis which can lead to periodontal disease, gum recession, jaw bone reduction, tooth loosening and loss.
Unfortunately, human teeth are rather irregularly shaped and have many curves and hard to reach surfaces, including nooks and cranies. Likewise, the gums are also hard to massage and clean.
Brushing, when done with a conventional toothbrush is inadequate to protect against cavities. The ordinary toothbrush is incapable of reaching around gum and tooth corners and in the cranies on and between teeth, even when brusing is done by dutifully following a dentist's or dental hygienist's directions. Even toothbrushes that have a bent, or smaller-than-usual, brush end cannot adequately clean these hard-to-reach gum and tooth surfaces. Moreover, use of such specialized toothbrushes significantly increases the time an individual has to spend for cleaning his teeth and most people are reluctant to use them. Electric toothbrushes and water jets only serve to increase the number of paraphernalia necessary for tooth care. The result is that their beneficial effects are curtailed or even annulled by the fact that they are time consuming, cumbersome, and inefficient to use.
Worse, use of a conventional toothbrush can be outright harmful for the teeth and gums. The reason is that the inflexible handle is not sensitive to the amount of pressure applied on the teeth and gums, or to the nature and curvature of the surface being brushed. Zealous brushers tend to apply pressure on the toothbrush, which is transferred through the rigid toothbrush onto the teeth and gums. In fact, the handle behaves as a lever increasing the pressure applied to the tooth or gum. The user of the toothbrush is not conscious of the amount of pressure he is applying because of the reduced sensitivity of tooth and gum tissue (as compared to that of the skin, for example), and he does not have adequate control of the pressure exerted on the teeth and gums.
One or more of the following problems can be traced directly to harsh brushing:
(1) Injury to the gingivae. This leads to gingivitis, inflammation of the gingiva and/or the oral mucous membrane due to its invasion by bacteria made possible by a break in the gingiva caused by hard brushing or gum massaging with another implement for dental care. This also causes "periodontal disease", i.e. it leads to gum recession, which in turn causes bone shrinkage and formation of alveolar pockets. It eventually causes loosening and loss of teeth. It is often directly traceable to injury of the gums from too harsh brushing. Management of periodontal disease is very expensive and often involves surgical intervention.
(2) Cavities. Harsh brushing causes grooves to be formed on the tooth enamel, especially along the gum line where the impact of the pressure during brushing is most severely felt. The so-formed grooves provide a nesting ground and ready access to the dentyne for caries-causing bacteria.